John Durant is a great contact for Visual Studio Tools for Office... I chatted with John when I was up in Seattle in January and have invited him down to speak at our TechEd event in August. John is the man when it comes to VSTO but since he is so involved in the Office Developers Conference this week he hasn't had a chance to spread the word that the Software Visual Studio Tools For Office "v3" - March Community Technology Preview (CTP) is now available for download to people that already have access to Microsoft Office 2007.

Although there is one BIG caveat that you should be aware of... This CTP requires you to have the Beta 1 Technical Refresh of Microsoft Office 2007. Only customers currently registered with the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 1 program (including the Office Developer Conference 2006 attendees) are able to install this CTP. If you are not one of them, there will be another release of this CTP coming later this spring that will be available for installation by the general public.

I guess by reading between the lines "later this spring" is when you can expect the public release of Microsoft Office 2007 in some way shape or form... woot!

Before you inundate me with questions on how you can get a hold of Office 2007 today...

If you are a New Zealand basedISV (and already registered on our partner program) please email "nztap at microsoft dot com" with you company name and a description of the product you will be building/ upgrading to support Office 2007.